MAYBE the uncertainty is the key ingredient. Perhaps the unknown future is driving individual and club to special places.

Seven consecutive wins, eight for the year. Victories against Brisbane, Narrm (last Friday night to open round 10), Western Bulldogs and St Kilda. Being out of contract at the end of 2023 certainly isn't adversely affecting Ken Hinkley or the Power through the first half of the season.

Both coach and club knew the stakes when they chose to enter their 11th year together without a commitment for a 12th. At 1-2 after three rounds, many suggested the union was finished.

Seven weeks later, on the back of some magical performances from young guns and toil through adversity, there is justified talk of a high ladder finish, even murmurings of a Grand Final.

The form of Zak Butters has been extraordinary, and his game against the Demons will take some beating as the best individual performance of the season. Connor Rozee has been brilliant, too, and Jason Horne-Francis regularly impactful. For what it's worth, I would have given him the two votes behind Butters out of last Friday's game.

In my eyes, there is no need to bring forward a decision on Hinkley's future. Doing so might actually become a distraction.

A new Eagles low, and there might be worse to come

LOSING to Hawthorn is a down moment for any club in 2023. Losing to it by 116 points, after already being humiliated on eight previous occasions from nine matches, may be the lowest moment of West Coast's 37 years in the AFL.

There have been bad Eagles periods since their AFL entry in 1987. The illegal drugs era of the 2000s was embarrassing and disgraceful, but results wise, that era incorporated two Grand Finals and a premiership (2006). The two seasons after Mick Malthouse departed as coach were bad ones, but brilliant playing list decisions were made in the national drafts of those years.

So listless have the Eagles become during the past two years that their current problems are going to stretch into many seasons to come. As horrendous as the results have been, the club may still be some way off actually bottoming out.

Four goals for the match, none in the second half, and a match total of 26 points in Launceston against Hawthorn on Sunday was the latest debacle. The ninth defeat from 10 matches this year. Added to the 20 losses of 2022. Heaped up on losing the last four of 2021. Thirty-three losses from the past 36 matches. Their win against Collingwood, in Melbourne last year, is football's greatest mystery.

Ranking the myriad problems of the Eagles is inexact science. But among the mix is: the too-long retention of ageing greats on massive deals, questionable trades, equally questionable drafting, highly questionable fitness programs, stale decision-making in football and administration, a weak board.

Maybe the only positive on this list right now is Oscar Allen, and through no fault of his own, even he was unable to exert any impact against Hawthorn.

West Coast has allowed itself to meander for too long. A once ruthless board and even more ruthless CEO in Trevor Nisbett would never have tolerated the woe-is-us attitude which was presented to the public in the early days of the COVID-19 outbreak of 2020. Adam Simpson as coach drove that insipid outlook. Maybe he could see the carnage that was to follow.

This club, out of nowhere given it won a premiership in 2018, and won a final in 2019 before losing a final in 2020, allowed itself to became very, very ordinary. And it is still sliding.

End looms in sorry Hawks saga

THE AFL stated last year it would publicly release the findings of its independent panel's investigation into racism at Hawthorn, and reiterated that stance early this year.

It needs to follow through with that commitment. The claims, the counter claims, the confusion, the anger, the style of inquiry, the facts. All of it needs to be aired.

That four-person panel's work is expected to be finalised by midweek, after a belated attempt at a form of mediation on Tuesday. The highest-profiled of those facing the most serious of the racism allegations – Alastair Clarkson and Chris Fagan – have long denied the claims and won't personally be in attendance on Tuesday.

That that duo hasn't had the formal chance to deny the claims in either the Hawthorn Football Club's own investigation or within the independent panel's workings has been, and remains, the most alarming part of the entire saga. The AFL owes it to the industry it runs, and by extension the wider public, to provide official reasons for that being the case, along with all other deliberations and decisions reached.

Hawthorn has in recent weeks been embarking on a rearguard media campaign to position itself away from potential sanctions, largely through its former president Jeff Kennett, who was in charge of the Hawks when the decision was made to hire a consultant to investigate racism within his club, but also via other senior officials.

I have long advocated serious sanctions for the club and nothing I've seen in the past seven months has changed that view. It chose to allow its own investigation to be conducted in a manner that didn't allow for allegations to be put to Clarkson and Fagan, and then dumped everything with the AFL.

As well as the findings to be made by the AFL into the Hawthorn racism investigation, there needs to be a commitment to the entire industry that never again will a club be allowed to instigate its own inquiries into such a serious matter in such a questionable way.